Well, I am not one to mind much if leaves do not move and a place is silent. A man does not regard these matters in the way ladies do, but I must say even I--and my friends will be able to measure from that the uncanniness of our surroundings--even I remembered with a certain regret that Lord Sigismund’s very savage and very watchful dog had gone with his master and was therefore no longer with us. Nor had we even Jellaby’s, which, inferior as it was, was yet a dog, no doubt with some amount of practice in barking, for it was still at the veterinary surgeon’s, a gentleman by now left far behind folded among the embosoming hills. My hearers must be indulgent if my style from time to time is tinged with poetic expressions such as this about the veterinary surgeon and the hills, for they must not forget that the party I was with could hardly open any of its mouths without using words plain men like myself do not as a rule even recollect. It exuded poetry. Poetry rolled off it as naturally and as continuously as water off a duck’s back. Mrs. Menzies-Legh was an especial offender in this respect, but I have heard her gloomy husband, and Jellaby too, run her very close. After a week of it I found myself rather inclined also to talk of things like embosoming hills, and writing now about the caravan tour I cannot always avoid falling into a strain so intimately, in my memory, associated with it. They were a strange set of human beings gathered together beneath those temporary and inadequate roofs. I hope my hearers _see_ them. Our march that day had been more silent than usual, for the party was greatly subject, as I was gradually discovering, to ups and downs in its spirits, and I suppose the dreary influence of Bodiam together with the defection of Lord Sigismund lay heavily upon them, for that day was undoubtedly a day of downs. The weather was autumnal. It did not rain, but sky and earth were equally leaden, and I only saw very occasional gleams of sunshine reflected in the puddles on which my eyes were necessarily fixed if I would successfully avoid them. At a place called Brede, a bleak hamlet exposed on the top of a hill, we were to have met Lord Sigismund but instead there was only an emissary from him with a letter for Mrs. Menzies-Legh, which she read in silence, handed to her husband in silence, waited while he read it in silence, and then without any comment gave the signal to resume the march. How differently Germans would have behaved I need not tell you, for news is a thing no German will omit to share with his neighbours, discussing it thoroughly, _lang und breit_, from every possible and impossible point of view, which is, I maintain, the human way, and the other way is inhuman. “Is not Lord Sigismund coming to-day?” I asked Mrs. Menzies-Legh the first moment she came within earshot. “I’m afraid not,” said she. “To-morrow?” “I’m afraid not.” “What, not again at all?” I exclaimed, for this was indeed bad news.